About This Book

The international art event La Biennale di Venezia is taking place for the fifty-fifth time from June 1 through November 24, 2013. For this occasion, Germany has not only switched pavilions with France, but is also showing artworks that focus on themes of intercultural and intellectual transference. Susanne Gaensheimer, director of Frankfurt’s MMK Museum für Moderne Kunst, has curated a selection of work for Germany’s pavilion in the building of the French pavilion by Chinese conceptual artist and regime critic Ai Weiwei, the German-French filmmaker Romuald Karmakar, the South African photographer Santu Mofokeng, and the Indian photographer Dayanita Singh. With the selection of these artists, Gaensheimer is continuing her transnational curatorial approach from 2011 that presented Germany as playing an active role in a complex, global structure that benefits from international exchange.

Gaensheimer states: “The artists that I invited and their work represent various themes that result from the convergence of diverse ideologies and ways of life that have a large impact on us today. It was important to me that all of them succeed in expanding our perspectives to include the points of view of the ‘other’—even in ways that may be uncomfortable.”

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This official catalog of the German pavilion is as international as the work shown within it. It contains 11 bylined articles and detailed artist portraits as well as extensive photo features that explore Germany’s contribution and its cultural and sociopolitical background. This content goes beyond the German perspective to put the featured work into the context of the current global art world.

These critical texts are put into visual form by Chris Rehberger, whose work also makes a clear contribution to their debate.

In 2009, Susanne Gaensheimer became the director of Frankfurt’s MMK Museum für Moderne Kunst. She was also responsible for the content of the German pavilion at the Venice Biennale in 2011. That year, the art historian accepted the Golden Lion award for Germany’s contribution, in which she showed work by Christoph Schlingensief.

As a curator, Gaensheimer has organized solo exhibitions by international artists such as Liam Gillick, Elizabeth Peyton, Olaf Nicolai, Tobias Rehberger, Rodney Graham, Lucy Gunning, Harun Farocki, James Coleman, Thomas Demand, Maria Eichhorn, Olafur Eliasson, David Goldblatt, David Claerbout, Andreas Hofer, and Cerith Wyn Evans. She is also currently serving on the jury for the Turner Prize 2013.

Chris Rehberger is a graphic designer, the director of the Berlin agency Double Standards, the co-owner of the music label Perlon, and the brother of artist Tobias Rehberger whose exhibition catalogs he sometimes designs. With Double Standards he has established his own distinctive graphic style, which can be seen in his posters for the Berlin Film Festival or the Haus der Kulturen der Welt.